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Ben Roth On Schindlers’s List
To view the Holocaust from within a group psychoanalytic frame it is
necessary to treat the actual Holocaust in the manner of memory; to distinguish
the one remembered - from the mythic or metaphoric one. The actual Holocaust
left in its wake questions about silence, criminality and the long term effects of
trauma on individuals, families and groups. On the other hand it left unanswered
questions about the appeal of the Nazi as a political (group) movement. It also
left behind less significant questions about whether something as profound as
the Holocaust can be portrayed in a narrative form. The eloquent plea that the
historical Holocaust story be told (Weisel1960) is held in a paradox since it is
doubtful whether words, art or cinematic images can convey any part of its actual
meaning. Further complicating this issue is a necessary distinction between the
actual people, historical events and the transmission of trauma and defenses
from generation to generation. In focusing on this American film, particular
attention is given to the special appeal of certain kinds of leaders coupled with
America's underlying ambivalent attempt to unhitch itself from anything European
and therefore historical (Roth, 1993.)
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The Film “Schindler’s List” seen through the prism of Leadership Styles.
In this paper I will illuminate certain group dynamic aspects of the film
“Schindler’s List and perhaps of Spielberg’s other film efforts. It is not my intent to
either criticize or honor the film, nor do I intend to minimize its inaccuracies,
cinematic license nor divergence from the source material or historical facts.
Others have better credentials to do so and have done so already. (See
Gourevitch, 1994 for a critique of the film and Crowe 2004 for recent research on
Schindler.) It is my hope that this endeavor exist in harmony with these other
efforts while demonstrating that dynamic group meanings are discernible
operating as an organizing principle in the structure of this film. Moses' (1993)
suggests that affiliation determines perception in writing of these historical and
emotional events, in addition I suggest that Bion’s concept of vertices (Bion
1970) also determines discovery and affiliation while I align myself as someone
not directly affected by the Holocaust
All film making is a complex group process with a cinematic end product
produced by a variety of people performing group tasks. What role these
leadership group dynamics played in real life or in the construction of the film
must remain hypothetical; however I believe there is something to learn and gain
from this form of analysis. Film may be viewed as a form of articulated
stimulation whose complex task is to form a narrative that allows social and
political meanings to be discovered. The interplay of film sound and imagery
stimulates patterns of associations in the viewer. Yet the film is experienced as
outside of the self that allows it to communicate into a mental space that fosters
the experience of actual and virtual at the same time. Spielberg’s film, taken from
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a book with the same title, is primarily an American film, informed by a perception
and psychology that both Americanizes the Holocaust and fits it into a
melodramatic structure utterly acceptable to American film audiences. Schindler's
story, when compared to the solitary story of the survival of V. Szpilman
portrayed in the autobiographical “The Pianist”(2002), directed by Roman
Polanski 1 satisfies the melodramatic moral needs of an American movie by
telling an uncomplicated story of individual conversion; a seeming conversion of
a man of indifference to others and hollow self-interest who inexplicably develops
an empathic relationship with the people he has saved and in so doing develops
an altruistic sensibility. From a psychoanalytic perspective, it is a story of a
manipulative narcissist who (seemingly or temporarily) develops empathy for
others. The character of Schindler taken by it self is an exception to the usual
kind of hero in a Spielberg film. (See appendix )
Narrative films set in the holocaust do not address “The Holocaust” as a
specific event, rather it is one that uses a narrow lens to reflect on a wider
historical process; in this case the tragedies of the Jews in Krakow is a back drop
for the unfolding of parts of Oskar Schindler's story. From a group dynamic
perspective the Jews on Schindler’s actual List become his horde, his group, his
audience. And Schindler is the leader of the group: a group Schindler first
exploits as a manufacturer and profiteer, then leads, and ultimately through a
seeming personal conversion he comes to protect as the war ends. When I
initially viewed this film, I was immediately aware that from the perspective of
1
Polanski, unlike Spielberg, is a Holocaust survivor. He and his father
survived the extermination of the Jews in Krakow. Pawel Edelman's camera
work in “The Piano “is moving and he has brilliantly captured the dark
sadness and hopelessness in the visual canvas in an effective way. One
wonders what kind of “Schindler” film Polanski would have created if he
accepted Speilberg’s offer to direct “ Schindler’s List “
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leadership and group analysis the unfolding of the story of Schindler can be
recast by the question of who shall lead the group. Subsequent viewing of the
film substantiated this group perspective that there are three different kinds of
group leader in this film.
War and war films
In the following I will situate the Holocaust film as specific subgenre of the
War movie so that I may make comparisons of articulated styles of leadership.
Freud (1921) viewed the Army as one of the natural social groups. Being in a war
temporarily and often permanently transforms the personalities of participants
into interdependent social group structures of soldiers and civilians. Simply put,
army’s at war are large hierarchical groups in combat usually usurping other
social systems and accounting for the death of thousands of people. There is no
grace to war and morality is often the first destroyed innocent bystander. There is
little humanity in its goals and personal demands and yet the group bonding of
men who face danger together is intensely strong and long lasting. Chaotic or
situationally induced acts of violence are commonplace and acceptable usually
occurring within group behaviors while simple every day acts of humanity are
unusual under fire. Life as a captive may maintain some humanity, often some
affectionate group affiliations, and some degree of choice. Captives, soldiers and
civilians while different forms of group structures with differing moral cultures,
have in common the wish and the need for the creation of a group leader. From
an analytic perspective the leader's role in these different groups is the same: to
reduce anxiety and to offer hope. As an example from a recent film Hotel
Rwanda (2004), if the viewer can step outside the horrific images of genocide,
Paul Rouseabangina portrayed by Don Cheadle, starts as a modest man who is
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converted into a leader of courage and action by the genocidal acts around him,
giving hope and direction to other people who flock to him. From a perspective of
the character structure of a leader, he is a man converted by altruistic motives
(Staub, 2005) to become a leader.
Generally speaking filming war is problematic, and it is unlikely that films
can capture the uncertainty, chaos and random destructiveness of actual warfare
with anything close to either the reality or the feelings that accompany these acts.
Spielberg has come closest to capturing the murderous intensity of battle in the
opening sequences in Private Ryan. Filming concentration camps poses similar
problems and Spielberg was not as successful in that films creating a reality
based image of death factories.
American War Films
"War," says Schindler "brings out the best and the worst of people."
American war films in general reveal attempts to engage in a discourse with the
psychological changes produced by war on men. American war films have their
own development from the propaganda films of early WW 11, the heroic middle
and late phase films, and the ambivalent and often anti war films of the post
Vietnam era. One underlying unifying psychological question raised in all these
films is how war affects men, how it changes men, and the ultimate outcomes
and manifestations of such changes. Inherent in the general question of how
men are changed by being at war is the seemingly constant related question of
how men assume leadership and command other men under conditions of war.
For an example in another Spielberg film “Private Ryan” the sentimental image of
the central character embodies the altruistic leader who cares for his men and
sacrifices for the men under his command
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An exemplary theme of the dual aspects of cinematic male leadership and
representation of masculinity is often found in violent films made for male
audiences; one example standing for many similar American films is Oliver Stone's
war film Platoon. Platoon's narrative centers on the conflict of command leadership
between opposing representations carried by the characters Burns and Elias:
Burns is the male leader who is feared because of his destructive rages and Elias
the male leader who cares for his men and is loved and admired by his men. In this
war film the dark side temporarily triumphs with Burns' murder of Elias out of envy
turned to disgust for his ‘weakness”. With Burns' cruelty already established by this
act, his victorious destruction of Elias and over the sensitive caring male
representation is not an acceptable outcome for American audiences. The required
cinematic moral order is accomplished by a restorative assault on Burns in which
Burns is killed as a cleansing act and a younger man takes over command. In such
a manner Oliver Stone composes his iconic image of American soldiers and
American war veterans. The American Soldier is a man psychologically changed
by war and the veteran survivor as one who remains loyal and pure and is made
wiser by killing (Newsinger, 1993). From a psychoanalytic perspective neither the
evil-destructive or the loving male imago is understood or wished for as surviving in
this kind of conflict.
Spielberg seemingly is interested in moral conversion and sacrifice in his
films. The personification of the conflict between the leader who is loved and the
one who represents aggression and destructiveness or the "dark side" finds earlier
substantive resonance in the iconic imagery accompanying Luke Skywalker and
Darth Vader in Spielberg and Lucas’ Star Wars trilogy of men making war and
fathers made bad. These dual mythic images of male leaders as loving and killing
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are frequently the forces which make for heroic story telling and they reappear in
Schindler’s List again in the forms of Schindler and Goeth, the concentration camp
Commandant. In the following I will discern the roles of the three group leaders in
this film as their representation bears on the psychology and function of group
leaders : the aggressive-destructive narcissist Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), the
manipulative performing narcissist, Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), and the workgroup leader: Stern (Ben Kingsley)
Schindler’s List
When I first viewed this film it appeared that from a group analytic
perspective this film contains two separate narratives. The first 80 minutes of the
film the narrative follows and establishes Schindler's manipulative ascent into
prominence along with his sexual and alcoholic appetites. His business success
making enameled pots is marked by his supplying the Nazi’s with luxury items
with the assistance of a man referred to as Stern. Schindler seems unaffected by
what is going on around him and interested in his own success and his own
sensual pleasures as he seemingly assumes his survival is not at risk. Between
Stern and Schindler there is a different kind of relationship in which they appear
to assume different interdependent roles in which Stern shrewdly tries to save as
many people as he can by assigning them to Schindler work list, making them
Schindler’s Jews, while Schindler becomes increasing dependent on Stern, an
accountant, to manage all aspects of the business he bought with Stern’s help
from desperate Polish Jews. In the scene in which Stern is rescued from the train
going to the death camp, Schindler demonstrates his ability to understand the
Nazi mentality by essentially bluffing his way to saving Stern by saying that the
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men in charge will be sent to the Russian front by allowing Schindler to be
insulted by their taking away an essential man for Schindler’s work. Rebuffed
initially by Stern’s name being on the Nazi list, Schindler (without any authority)
signs the list to take Sterns name off and Stern to safety. When Stern humbly
apologizes to Schindler for causing a problem, Schindler utters the dependent
and self interested phrase as the train being sent to the crematorium leaves
without Stern, “What would have happened to me?.”.
In terms of group leadership Schindler is the erstwhile self-appointed
“King” of the Jews2, manipulative, narcissistic, libidinal, and living off their labor,
while Stern is the effective Jewish Prime Minister essentially assuming the role of
the work-group leader and literal human resource person concerned with saving
as many lives as he can. Schindler's is self-proclaimed promotion selling his
wares to the Nazi high command and Stern makes his list of Jewish workers
names, runs the business, counsels Schindler and makes the products and
events happen. The entire first 80 minutes of the film is about the emerging
relationship between the reluctant Stern and Schindler, while the second half
focuses on the relationship between Schindler and Goeth.
Prior to Goeth's arrival, Spielberg continually makes this cinematic point
from the opening sequence in which the camera follows Schindler dressing and
winning over the Nazi's by gifts, to a later crises scene when he is financially
bargaining for the release of his female workers wrongly sent to Auschwitz:
Schindler sells Schindler or he sells his plan. In one scene he reads of a list of
items to be acquired to bribe the SS (with invested Jewish money) from Poles.
2
King of the Jews is a term referring to Jewish history in which NonJewish Kings were appointed over the slave state of Jews.
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Boxed teas are good, coffee, pate, uhm, kilbassa sausage, cheeses,
caviar. And of course, who could live without German cigarettes and as many as
you can find. And some more fresh fruit - they're real rarities, oranges, lemons,
pineapples. I need several boxes of German cigars, the best. And dark and
sweetened chocolate, not in the shape of lady fingers...we're going to need lots
of cognac, the best - Hennessy. Dom Perignon champagne. Get L'Espadon
sardines. And, oh, try to find nylon stockings.
From the moment that Goeth enters the story in his command car,
chooses the Jewish maid Helen because she has never been a maid and brutally
kills the female architect in front of Jewish workers to demonstrate that Jews are
expendable, the nature of conflict within the narrative changes to the ascension
of Goeth as the brutal enforcer of extinction. Goeth is established as the
destroyer of Krakow’s Jewry by an incredible scene in which he launches the
destruction of the Jewish Ghetto with a speech of his genocidal intent to remove
any trace of Jews from the recent 600 year old history of Krakow. The remainder
of the film then deals with the intertwined relationship between Schindler and
Goeth soon business partners, while Stern remains the background leader and
work facilitator until the films’ end. In one scene after the business has been
moved inside Goeth’s camp “During another hedonistic party at Goeth's villa
attended by Schindler, he has been able to summon Stern from his barracks and
speak to his accountant outside Plaszow's work camp gates. Stern prompts his
incompetent ex-employer - now without his useful Jewish financial,
organizational, or middleman skills - to remember the birthdays of their SS
friends' wives and children, and the proper method of payoffs (without paperwork,
invoices, or receipts) to the main administration and economics office and the
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armaments board, the governor general's division of the interior, the chief of
police's fees and black market contacts. Exasperated by the bureaucracy (as
Goeth had earlier predicted) of working with the SS, Schindler threatens to give
up: "It gives me a headache," he complains. Stern is concerned: "Herr Direktor,
don't let the things fall apart. I worked too hard." Schindler then shares food
scavenged from the party with Stern.
It is difficult not to be sympathetic to the plight of the Jews in this film and
the quick intercut scenes showing their fate are simple and well done. It is also
difficult to not be sympathetic to the portrayal of Schindler and the conversion
scene in which he overviews the destruction of the Jewish Ghetto from a hill
over-looking the ghetto as its people are destroyed and the Jewish presence all
but eliminated. Yet, I must turn away from that aspect of the movie to focus on
another dynamic of the film. The other available structure of this film is formed by
a represented conflict between styles of leaders of groups under unusual
conditions or war and imprisonment in concentration camps.
As with all such films the concentration camp assumes the representation
as the final platform to death. On this bleak stage strut both Schindler and Goeth,
somewhat protected and isolated from the reality of the suffering in their
surroundings with Schindler spinning cocoons of privilege and libidinal excesses
seemingly oblivious to the human wasteland around them. And Goeth is the
embodiment of Hitler’s call for “A violent active brutal youth…. with no intellectual
training” carrying out his extermination policy on whims. In one scene in Goeth’s
villa overlooking the camps yard Goeth kills at random in the open field of the
camp with a rifle, choosing his victims by chance, while later Schindler’s helps
someone escape their obvious fate. This juxtaposition frames the emerging
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differences between Goeth and Schindler. Goeth’s random killing captures the
terrible uncertainty of life in the death camps where death appeared not as the
work of human hands but as an impersonal destiny and a direct expression of
Hitler’s wish for brutal death funneled through Goeth. In this arena Stern also
functions, a composite figure drawn from Schindler’s historical lieutenants, to
hold together the small community of workers in the factory who will endure
under his protection and the shield of Schindler’s Machiavellian maneuvers.
To frame the initial discussion of distinctions between Schindler and Goeth
I will reframe Meloy’s (1988) seminal work on the nature of psychopaths. Meloy
follows a historical psychoanalytic path that distinguishes two distinct types of
psychopathic offenders (Meloy, 1988) : the destructive psychopath (violent) and
the manipulative psychopath (libidinal). He believes these are distinct types that
do not mix while Douglas (1995) refined this distinction of the destructive
psychopath into two types, the chaotic and the organized. The German
concentration camps with their dependency on lists and numbers would appear
that they were run by the more plan-full and organized type of destructive
psychopath; ones that constructed lists. These distinctions are important
because they appear as archetypes in this movie representing linked types of
leaders. Goeth is the disciplined military killer, giving orders expecting
compliance, killing matter-of-factly while Schindler is the persuader, the
manipulative sexual yet caring leader trying to prevent killing
Is it possible that the audience is gazing on Schindler and Goeth as the
symbolic twin faces of Fascism and Capitalism; of symbols of male manipulation
and destructive violence? Are their faces those of an adaptive survivor and
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malignant destroyer under war conditions? The scenes in which Schindler and
Goeth drink and exchange perspectives on health, on forgiveness and about
Helen (the maid) can not only be understood as reflecting their dual moral perspe
Goeth: You know, I look at you. I watch you. You're not a drunk. That's,
that's real control. Control is power. That's power.
Schindler: Is that why they fear us?
Goeth: We have the f--king power to kill, that's why they fear us.
Schindler: They fear us because we have the power to kill arbitrarily. A man
commits a crime, he should know better. We have him killed and we feel pretty
good about it. Or we kill him ourselves and we feel even better. That's not power,
though, that's justice. That's different than power. Power is when we have every
justification to kill - and we don't.
Goeth: You think that's power?
Schindler: That's what the emperors had. A man stole something, he's brought in
before the emperor, he throws himself down on the ground, he begs for mercy,
he knows he's going to die. And the emperor pardons him. This worthless man,
he lets him go.
Goeth: I think you are drunk.
Schindler: That's power, Amon. That is power. (Schindler gestures toward Goeth
as a merciful emperor) Amon, the Good.
Goeth: (He smiles and laughs) I pardon you.
Later Goeth tries out the power of pardoning but then stands at the mirror
fascinated with his emperor like power, imagining himself with the restrained
imperial might, but the new image doesn't fit. He kills again with a rifle from the
Villa; a pardon wasn't as powerful or pleasing as sporting target practice.
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In one of the most powerful scenes in the movie that further establishes
the personality of Goeth fitting into Meloy’s distinction of the violent destructive
psychopath he comes to the basement to tell Helen.
I came to tell you that you really are a wonderful cook and a well-trained servant.
I mean it. If you need a reference after the war, I'd be happy to give you one. It's
kind of lonely down here, it seems, with everyone upstairs having such a good
time. Does it? You can answer. 'What was the right answer?' That's-that's what
you're thinking. 'What does he want to hear?' The truth, Helen, is always the right
answer. Yes, you're right. Sometimes we're both lonely. Yes, I mean, I would like,
so much, to reach out and touch you in your loneliness. What would that be like, I
wonder? I mean, what would be wrong with that? I realize that you're not a
person in the strictest sense of the word. Maybe you're right about that too. You
know, maybe what's wrong isn't - it's not us - it's this. I mean, when they compare
you to vermin and to rodents and to lice, I just, uh...You make a good point, a
very good point. (He strokes her hair) Is this the face of a rat? Are these the eyes
of a rat? That's not a Jew's eyes. (He brings his hand over her breast) I feel for
you, Helen. (He decides not to kiss her) No, I don't think so. You're a Jewish
bitch. You nearly talked me into it, didn't you?
As well the scene in which Goeth speaks out for Schindler after he is
imprisoned for kissing a Jewish girl in public at a factory party, bonds them in
identification as ironically Goeth probably saved Schindler’s life. Goeth makes
distinctions between Schindler the lover of women and Goeth the killer of women
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as Goeth arranges a bribe with an SS man for Schindler breaking the Race and
Resettlement Act3.
He likes women. He likes good-looking women. He sees a beautiful
woman - he doesn't think. He has so many women. They love him, yeah, they
love him. I mean, he's married, yeah, but... All right, she was Jewish, he shouldn't
have done it, but you didn't see this girl. I saw this girl. This girl was, wuff, very
good-looking. They cast a spell on you, you know, the Jews. When you work
closely with them like I do, you see this. They have this power, it's like a virus.
Some of my men are infected with this virus. They should be pitied, not punished.
They should receive treatment, because this is as real as typhus. I see this all the
time. It's a matter of money, hmm?
This dialogue is meant to reveal not only Schindler’s erotic impulsive
behavior but that Goeth unknowingly jealously identifies with Schindler’s success
with women and simultaneously projects malevolent aspects into women leaving
him impotent with fearful rage and violent to others.
Three types of leaders
If the reader accepts the idea that cinema construction reflects cultural
concerns and values then this study of Schindler’s List offers a vehicle for
examining a perspective on leadership in War in particular and leaders in
general. The three types of leaders demarcated in this film are the manipulative
but caring narcissist (Schindler), the destructive impotent narcissist (Goeth) and
the work group leader (Stern).
3
Hitler authorized Himmler to establish a Race and Resettlement Office
under the aegis of the SS. It was the Race and Resettlement Office that
was to be responsible for the `racial' purification of the Reich and the
establishment of a Nordic empire.
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Into these iconic representations are embedded some important
distinction not only among kinds of personality types but also kinds of leaders. I
will address Stern first. Stern is portrayed as a kindly efficient man, working as
Schindler’s subordinate to first help Schindler start his business, then to compile
the original List of people who will first work in the factories and then survive
while making sure the plant runs smoothly. Ultimately he becomes Schindler’s
coach, counseling him how to keep the wheels of bought safety functioning and
his adjunct in bribing ghetto officials to get certain workers in their factory,
preparing the list of workers taken to Czechoslovakia and ultimately saved. He
survives by working for Goeth as well. He is portrayed as a reluctant expediter
whose inner life and affiliations are never revealed and in the nearly last scene
blesses Schindler with a gold ring4. He is the leader as manager, the extension of
the authority’s ego and wishes, and the man whose self-interests never appear
while continuously maintaining a non threatening stance to his hierarchical
superiors. He is necessary for success, possessed of many skills and ultimately
a survivor. He appears altruistic without narcissistic self interests.
North Americans seem concerned to integrate self esteem and altruistic
goals
(Staub, 2004) but these are not necessarily over-lapping
interests in leaders. Altruistic values and behavior in individuals and leaders such
as Stern and Schindler may serve complex interests. They may serve self
interest motivated by real and anticipated rewards; they may serve moral
interests guided by adherence to internal moral or political standards or they may
serve altruistic goals motivated by a desire to help others, either to reduce their
stress or pain or to compensate for guilt feelings. Schindler’s sensual self interest
4
The inscription on the ring made symbolically from a gold filling
carries the quote from the bible'. Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire “
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is in food, drink and women. He is a man interested in his own pleasures and
perhaps in ensuring his own survival and as portrayed as shameless in his
narcissistic self interest.
Ironically destructive individuals or leaders such as Goeth may similarly be
motivated by self interest and moral or political internal standards. It would then
seem that what distinguishes Schindler from Goeth in this film can be found in
the altruistic realm of behavior. Repeatedly Schindler is seen performing acts of
kindness, giving food to Stern, counseling and then saving Helen, cooling off a
cattle car filled with people with water. Despite his self interest, and his personal
appetites, he is capable of concern for others. Concern for others seems to have
two specific roots as measured in social psychology: empathy and prosocial
value orientation, that is a positive regard for other human beings and a feeling of
personal responsibility for their welfare.
It is not possible to psychoanalyze a cinematic representation; never the
less psychoanalysis has something to offer in terms of understanding altruism in
leaders that may confirm further distinctions between Schindler and Goeth.
Goeth for many is the personification of Nazi evil. "Evil," as used here, means
most simply a psychic absence of a capacity for concern and in its place is a fear
of being overwhelmed by internal or external destructive forces. In his speech to
Helen we see evidence of Goeth’s experience of Helen as destructive. In the final
card game with Schindler we see his confusion about her fate.5 We may
5
Schindler proposes to put Helen's name in the last line
left on the final page: "I'll never find a maid as welltrained as her in Berlin. They're all country girls."
Goeth's conflicted affection for the girl, and his distrust
of Schindler's consummate deal-making, sleight-of-hand
talents, make it difficult for him to agree to a card game
to decide Helen's fate: Schindler: She's just going to
Auschwitz # 2 anyway. What difference does this make?
Goeth: She's not going to Auschwitz. I'd never do that to
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understand in this the psychic effort to rid himself of certain undesirable aspects
of its own being by dissociating itself from its unwanted elements and attempting
to evacuate them through projection into the being and self-experience of
another. The effect of this malignant projection is always destructive to another
because it operates to degrade the being of the other by filling it with unwanted
dangerous or self-destructive attributes. From another vantage the destructive
person in power gives in and sides with internal demonic promptings because it
can not assume an internal position of concern. Without psychic support, Goeth
cannot maintain his integrity when erotically aroused or invested with concern.
From the dialogue we can see how Goeth makes use of mechanisms of extreme
objectification of the other as a special category “not human “by use of powerful
defenses of denial, splitting, dissociation, externalization, and projective
identification. Re reading the dialogue between Goeth and Helen we can witness
Goeth’s transformation from libidinal interest to malignant projection to a
vulnerable paranoid position of seeing the other as a viral infection. He can not
resist the appeal of the destructive in the preamble to the final card game with
Schindler, to make death.
Summary
her. No, I want her to come back to Vienna with me. I want
her to come work for me there. I want to grow old with her.
Schindler: Are you mad? Amon, you can't take her to Vienna
with you.
Goeth: No, of course I can't. That's what I'd like to do.
What I can do, if I'm any sort of a man, is the next most
merciful thing. I should take her into the woods and shoot
her painlessly in the back of the head. (Goeth reconsiders
the wager) What is it you said for a natural twenty-one?
Fourteen thousand, eight hundred?
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In summary, I have attempted to convey in words, exactly what Spielberg
visually and perhaps unintentionally created in his movie: the tension filled
relationship between three different types of leaders. While Spielberg used all of
the devices of the visual media, images without sound, red children’s coat in a
black and white film, juxtaposition of contrasting scenes, close-up of faces, foregrounded action, I have tried to convey in words something about the psychology
of leaders that organizes and deepens the perception of the film. The film is a
cinematic landscape of a familiar war infected group terrain in which are
juxtaposed moments of affiliative caring and the absolute power to destroy life
and meaning.
As even the image, behavior and fate of Amon Goeth symbolizes the old
(Nazi) fascistic leader in cinematic reality brilliantly juxtaposed to both the flawed
character of the business man Schindler, who became a “ righteous person “,
and Stern “the silent effective minister “ there is even more to the images than a
discourse of a leaders power or situational violence. There is the contrast
between the forces creating and enjoying destruction and those that exhibit
concern. These are still contemporary political concerns.
For those interested in the distinction between the fantasy of the movie
and the reality of Schindler and Stern I have included the review of the latest
book on Schindler in the appendix.
Films
Hotel Rwanda Directed and produced by: Terry George
Released By: MGM/UA Released12/22/2004
19
The Pianist Directed by Roman Polanski Producer Alain Sarde
Released by Focus released 2002
Private Ryan Directed and Produced by Steven Speilberg
Released by Paramount 1998
Platoon Directed by Oliver Stone produced by John Daly
Realeased by Orion Pictures released 1986
Schindler’s List Directed by Steven Spielberg Producer Gerald Molen
Released By: Universal
released 1994
Bion, W. R. (1970). Attention and Interpretation. New York: Jason Aronson.
Crowe, D. M. (2004). The True Story of Oskar Schindler. Boulder Colorado:
Westview Press.
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Appendix
Schindler, a man with many flaws, risked his life and his fortune to save more
Jews during the Holocaust than anyone else did. While the young Swedish
diplomat Raoul Wallenberg saved a larger number of Jews, he had the
assistance of an entire team of people and the financial support of American
Jews. In contrast, Schindler had only the assistance of his wife, Emilie.
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Moreover, Schindler performed his heroic deeds only a short distance from
Auschwitz.
Schindler's road to rescuing almost 1,100 people was hardly predictable.
Born in the Sudetenland, the area of Czechoslovakia that was home to a large
German population and on which Hitler had designs, Schindler spied for the
Abwehr, the German army's espionage unit. He helped pave the way for
Germany's 1939 dismemberment of Czechoslovakia.
Shortly after Germany invaded Poland, Schindler showed up in Krakow
with one intention: to make money. He bought a Jewish-owned factory for a small
fraction of its original worth and then contracted with the SS for Jewish workers.
A lackluster businessman, Schindler let knowledgeable Jews run the factory
while he wined, dined and bribed German officials.
As the Germans moved to murder, Schindler -- revolted by this
development -- was transformed from self-interested shady, entrepreneur to
fierce defender of his workers. Schindler, the former German spy, became a
courier for Jewish aid organizations. He helped these organizations supply Jews
with money, food and medicine, and transmitted important information about the
gassings in Auschwitz.
In contrast to the impression given by Steven Spielberg in "Schindler's
List," the famous list was not compiled by Schindler but by one of his Jewish
administrators, Marcel Goldberg. Jews bribed Goldberg to get themselves on it
as inclusion on the list could mean the difference between life and death
Schindler did not create the list, but, motivated by a deep sense of
compassion for these people and revulsion at the Germans' actions, he did feel
responsible for keeping these people alive, particularly during the harrowing final
22
months of the war. As the situation in Krakow deteriorated, he moved his factory
to Czechoslovakia. By so doing, he saved the lives of his 1,100 workers.
Schindler's saga did not end with Germany's defeat. After the Holocaust,
Yad Vashem initially refused to honor him as a Righteous Gentile. How, it
wondered, could it balance his membership in the Nazi Party with his efforts to
save Jews? Those Jews whose factory he had expropriated protested to Yad
Vashem that he acquired the considerable sums he spent to save his workers
through the Aryanization of Jewish property and the use of slave labor. They tried
to take legal action against him. Other Schindler Jews objected vehemently,
arguing that, but for his actions, they would not have survived.
Reviewed by Deborah E. Lipstadt
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post Co.